You don’t need to sign up anywhere to take the course. All you need to get started is to start going through the lessons at your own pace. If you want to take the course with other students to get more feedback on the assignments, you can wait until it’s run again on reddit (look out for the announcement on /r/photography).

If you are following a live course, you should submit them on the dedicated subreddit (e.g. /r/photoclass2017). Otherwise, you can submit it as a comment to the lesson. Or just keep it to yourself, there won’t be any grading and what really matters is that you do it, not that you share it afterward.

No, you don’t need a DSLR, you could even do it with a camera phone! That being said, it will greatly help to understand a lot of the concepts if you can get manual control over focus and exposure, which is usually offered only on enthusiast/advanced models.

No, I have no other connection to reddit.com than having been a user there for a while. The class was originally run on the website, on /r/photoclass, and is often linked to there, hence the name and the connection.

If the class was useful to you, there are a few ways you can express your thanks: spread the word about my photography, buy your next piece of equipment from Amazon with this affiliate link (it won’t cost you any extra) or just make a small paypal donation. Thanks!